Category Archives: Art

Netflix DVD. They predicted it at 3.3 stars for me, and 3.4 for the general audience. I’m going to give it a weak 4 stars, because it was interesting. I have heard the music of the band New Order, and I do like it. I haven’t heard much of Joy Division, though, and was surprised to learn that they were basically the same band, but with different lead singers. The movie is filmed in what Netflix described as a “guerilla” manner, and it’s quite interesting, with the main actor talking to the viewer at times, explaining things from a current perspective. After one scene, they have the real person saying that it never happened, and they integrate that person into the scene as a character. There are some cool, edgy graphics, a very funny pigeon animation scene, and a fantastic job of acting by Sean Harris, who plays Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis. Steve Coogan is also very good in the lead role of Tony Wilson. I was kind of shocked at the amount of smoking in this movie, it felt like every person in the movie was smoking in every scene. Was it really like that? I was disappointed at the music in the movie, none of the songs even sounded like good songs, and I know that in real life the New Order songs that I’ve heard are good. I’m not going to bother finding out which ones they used in the movie, and listening to the versions I own (or can hear sample of on emusic).

Very sad news today that Leonard Nimoy has died. The wonderful Mr. Spock from Star Trek, the original, the logical Vulcan with the hidden heart of gold. For me, it is the end of an era – I loved Mr. Spock most of all among the cast of the show that stood for (and probably helped create) my love of science, and the promise of a bright future where we all would live together as equals. I am neither a Trekkie nor a Trekker, I don’t collect things related to it, and I don’t go to the conferences, but there was something very special within Star Trek, and a large part of it has died today. Here’s a beautiful illustration by Lei Feiyang that seems to capture the character better than any photograph. I realize that I’m overlooking Mr. Nimoy himself, in favor of a character he played, and I’m truly sorry for his family. As the public, we knew him as Spock, while his family knew the real Leonard Nimoy. It is fortunate for him that even though he felt that smoking caused his death, he managed to live a long and wonderful life.

Netflix DVD – they rated it as 4.3 stars for me, and 3.9 for the general audience. I’m going to give it 4 stars – it was fun to watch, but really, it just boiled down to this guy figuring out a way to paint photo-realistically using mirrors as aids, and recreating a famous Johannes Vermeer painting – a very long, painstaking process. He’s very clever, this Tim Jenison, the guy who created the famous Video Toaster (which I remember from around the time I was taking Digital Art & Design in college). It seems pretty certain that Vermeer himself must have used this process back in the Netherlands in the 1600’s. In a way, Jenison’s discovery is like somebody figuring out how the pyramids were built – if they had been built by a fairly simple process.